


Useless

by Miss_M



Series: J/B in Depeche Mode Key [10]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Depeche Mode
Genre: Declarations Of Love, Despair, End of the World, F/M, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Quests, Songfic, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-05
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 15:43:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1272133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Seven freezing, burning, blasted hells, wench, will you give up already?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Useless

**Author's Note:**

> Last fic in this series! Lyrics can be found [here](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/depechemode/useless.html). I own nothing.

“Seven freezing, burning, blasted hells, wench, will you give up already?”

Jaime intended to shout, though not quite so loudly, a scream more than a shout. His voice bounces off the mountains like a hawk’s piercing cry, except no hawks remain in this wilderness, all mice and voles having scarpered into snug barns or died in their burrows some moons past. Brienne’s face is redder than Jaime has ever seen it, and he thought he had seen her plain visage garbed in every warm shade from the palest pink to the brightest Lannister crimson. Her lips are pressed together in a thin line, and her fists are clenched around the hilts of her sword and dagger. Jaime wonders briefly if she has forgotten who he is and will attack him, as though in beating him she can defeat Winter and her own pigheadedness with bare steel. 

He cannot keep the anger out of his voice when next he speaks, nor does he try. They have been arguing the point for hours, and he is tired of it. It is nearly night, the sun has grown weak as a kitten, can barely shade the tops of the snowy peaks with pink and orange. Jaime has no strength left to reason with the wench, so he uses his words like a blacksmith’s mallets, warhammers to batter her into submission and acceptance of failure. 

“Catelyn Stark is dead,” he says, every word precise as a blow yet shivery, etched on the crystalline mountain air. “Dead twice over, and the second time you met her she cared nothing for honor or justice or her daughters, which you know better than anyone, wench. Last I heard, not one but two Targaryen armies were closing on King’s Landing, and they say the Wall has fallen and the dead are rising. Not to mention, we are at the start of a Long buggering Winter!” 

He stops himself before he brings an avalanche down on their heads with his shouting, pitches his voice so low the wench shivers worse to hear it than she does with the cold. 

“Nobody has heard anything of Sansa Stark since before Baelish’s death, if she ever was the girl he conjured up as his ‘daughter.’ Nobody has heard anything of Arya Stark since before her father’s death. They are _gone_ , wench. Dead or not, they are gone. If the gods are good, which they’re not, those girls are pretending to be smallfolk somewhere in Dorne or Essos, and safe as can be. Chances are they’ve been raped, killed, and eaten as well, for all I know. The Father and the Crone couldn’t find them with all their wisdom and lanterns, and you think you can? How quickly your modesty turns to pride, wench. Your vow, your quest – none of it is worth a mummer’s fart. Just let it go.” 

Brienne’s lower lip is trembling, she is biting it to make it stay still. Her hand shakes on Oathkeeper’s hilt, the steel hisses against its scabbard. “You said…” she manages between gritted teeth and frozen lips. 

“That this is my last chance of honor as well as yours. That Ned Stark’s sword should protect his daughters. That you were a shining fucking knight even if nobody ever called you that.” Jaime wants to sneer but he can feel his face twisting, he would gladly spit out the bitterness in his mouth onto the trodden snow between them if he could. “You still haven’t learned what words are worth. If you could wipe your arse with them, they might be some actual use. You’re the only one who still believes them.”

“I will not…”

Jaime doesn’t want to hear it, has heard it all before. He closes the distance between them, seizes the wench by her trembling shoulder, and shakes her. Her face closes up and her lips part, but she doesn’t whimper. Jaime does shout then, and if an avalanche should bury them at least death will be quick, and they need never have this argument again. 

“It’s too late, Brienne! Do you not understand? The whole world is dying, freezing in its bed and by its hearth, and you want to keep looking for two girls.” He wishes she would punch him, push him away, scream. Something. He lets himself say what he has been holding back all this time. “What good would it do anyone for you to get swallowed up by Winter all alone, and me never even knowing what became of you? What good would that do?” 

Brienne’s arms surge up between his, a burst of fire from stone and ice, and she throws him off as easily as Jaime knew she could. But she does not close in, does not draw her sword or attempt to pummel him. She is shaking like a birch in a storm, her teeth are chattering. 

“No good,” she mutters. “No good. There’s no time, and nothing I do is ever any good.” 

“Brienne.” Jaime reaches out to touch her cheek, but she starts away from him, averts her eyes, shakes her head violently. Has she run mad?

“What am I without my vow?” she says, so quietly Jaime almost doesn’t hear her, her words slurring as though she were drunk for the first time in her life. “What am I without my oath?”

Her eyes are the most terrible thing Jaime has ever seen when she raises her blue gaze to him again. End of the world, nothing. He cannot stand to see Brienne like this, broken at last. She has pulled her head down from the clouds where it’s floated all her life, despite everything, and seen the abyss under her feet. The rest of them learned at some point to walk as though there were solid ground beneath them, their own lies buoying them up, but not Brienne. She looked down, and fell, and was shattered on the rocks. Jaime just never noticed it before, for she learned to lie enough to hide it from him. Now he sees the truth of it, and he can’t think of a single thing to say or do. 

“Brienne.” Her name the only word which still makes sense to him. 

She shakes her head so sharply Jaime worries she will injure herself, then she folds down to the frozen ground and buries her face in her hands. She is silent, not weeping, turned to stone before his eyes. He wanted to break her, yes, but not like this. Wanted her to break and fight, not break and melt away in tears and despair. 

Jaime kneels in the snow and puts his arms around her. Pulls his glove off with his teeth so he can thread his fingers in her hair, brittle with ice crystals. 

“Brienne,” he says, more gently than he has ever spoken to anyone, to Cersei when they were young, to his son outside the Great Sept. “Sweetheart. Do not make your oaths into my sword hand, so you can barely live without them. Who will get me home if you lose yourself in this wilderness?” Advice he should have given her long ago, before ever he decided a Valyrian steel sword and his godsforsaken honor were the right gifts for her. A selfish plea to remind her who he is and what she is to him. 

It works, and better than he could have hoped. Brienne half snorts, half sniffles, swipes at her tears with her gloved palms. She is snotty and red-eyed when she lifts her face to look at Jaime. Her ugly face is sapphires on red velvet and alabaster, skin like blood and milk, and livid scars, framed in straw and diamonds. The most precious thing. 

“What did you call me?” she asks, a young girl’s voice, a girl before her first betrothal, when men’s soft words still concealed the truth from her. 

Jaime had not meant to say it, though in his head he’s said it to her a thousand times, and each time she scowled or shouted or fought him. She never spoke in that tremulous voice, a maiden wanting reassurance and the promise to be gently ravaged. 

Words should be wind. 

Jaime strokes Brienne’s hair, ice melting against his palm, kisses her temple, as though it were easy, as though they were children in a Long Summer and there had never been anything but simple tenderness between them. 

“That is a conversation for morning light and birdsong, wench. Though I doubt we’ll get much in the way of birdsong.” 

Brienne is watching him steadily, wanting to balk but trusting him. Always trusting him. Jaime could kiss her right now and it would be easy, but he seems to have developed a taste for difficult tasks and hopeless quests since he met her. 

He takes her chin between his thumb and forefinger, smiles, and hopes he sounds as truthful as he feels. “I promise we will speak of it on the morrow, provided we do not freeze before then. Get up and make a fire?”

Brienne blinks, sniffs. “I will not make a fire if you intend to simply sit and watch, ser…”

“Sit on what, wench, the cold ground? I’d sooner go to sleep on top of whatever’s left of the Wall.” 

Somewhere in the midst of the comfortable argument which unspools, they both rise and set about making a fire, a gesture of defiance to Winter and death rather than a true promise of warmth. Huddled with Brienne under their cloaks, as close to the fire as they can sit without setting themselves on fire, Jaime watches the lick of flame and dance of shadow on Brienne’s face out of the corner of his eye, and realizes he meant what he said, and now there is no going back. On the morrow he will speak to her of it. 

Words should be wind. This time they are not. 

It is pointless, of course, to call her sweetheart when they are as likely to freeze before they make it down this mountain as to be eaten by wolves or wights or starving peasants. Jaime gnaws on the dry bread Brienne passes him, finds the irony tastier by far: that the Kingslayer, of all people, might meet his fate speaking true. That the Maid of Tarth might win where Jaime’s dreams of honor and glory and Cersei’s flesh failed, and truly warm him before they die.


End file.
